The Supreme Court actually gives one to the defendants

Supreme Court expands defendant’s rights in plea deals
In two 5-4 decisions, the Supreme Court rules that defendants in criminal cases have a constitutional right to a competent lawyer’s advice when deciding whether to accept a plea deal.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-plea-20120322,0,2067347.story

It is really amazing to me the attitude of some of these so-called ‘justices’:

The ruling drew a sharply worded dissent from Justice Antonin Scalia, who took the unusual step of expressing his disagreement in the courtroom. He angrily called the court’s rulings a “judicially invented right to effective plea bargaining.”

The decisions were “a vast departure from our past cases” and would lead to endless litigation, he warned.

“Until today, no one has thought that there is a constitutional right to a plea bargain,” Scalia added.

This, despite “…about 97% of federal convictions and 94% of state convictions result from guilty pleas”. So, Scalia would rather stay in la la land where one can fantasize that every defendant has perfect knowledge, no prosecutor ever takes advantage of a public defender and no public defender is a fucking idiot. Thankfully, the majority saw fit to acknowledge reality and admit that there is a massive shadow ‘justice’ system that works diligently (and punishes severely if bypassed) to avoid any sort of trial.

Shockingly, Roberts, Thomas and Alito joined with Scalia in choosing to remain in la la land.

Now, if we could only find a way to address the situation where the innocent are caught up in our ‘justice’ system and foolishly elect to assume that a trial will prove their innocence.

First there was delayed focus, now there is image around corners

‘See-around-a-corner’ camera prototype unveiled
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/story/2012-03-20/see-around-a-corner-camera/53668372/1

Not ready for prime time, but it is quite interesting, none the less. In a few years I can see this being developed to the point where you can get really good images of what is around the corner and I can imagine all sorts of uses for it (none, so far, anyway, that are particularly ethical or moral).

What will humans think of next?

A must read if you care about education

Stop Stealing Dreams
http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/docs/StopStealingDreamsSCREEN.pdf

I have not yet finished it, but I have already decided that the content must be promulgated. The author, Seth Godin, seems like a pretty smart guy so I might read some of this other stuff, but for those of you who particularly care about education will undoubtedly find this an interesting read.

Reading this has made me think about my boy and how he is already struggling with school. Though he is clearly smart (according to my friend who is a high school math teacher, my 7 year old boy easily grasps concepts many of his students struggle with) he has developed an aversion to reading. As I read the article above I came to the realization that he ‘struggles’ with reading because he has come to associate reading with something he doesn’t like, therefore reading is ‘bad’ and he actively works to avoid it. Math, on the other hand, he likes, so finds enjoyment in learning new ways to do math problems. Last night before I decided to put my book down and engage him like I had promised (though my wife surely won’t like the way I chose, we watched RobCop together) when he was complaining about how bored he was (he wasn’t ‘green’ at school yesterday, evidently he got into some sort of shoving match at some point, thus lost his TV and computer game privileges) and I suggested he read, his response demonstrated very clearly he though reading was bad. Since it took me until the 6th grade to find joy in reading his early frustration is quite understandable to me, but I want so much to try to instill joy in reading sooner rather than risk it not happening later. I have already decided to read to him (and watch movies, though I got to remember to allow him to interrupt and use the damn remote control to pause to discuss things with him) and want to start with the Hobbit, but the copy I have (or had, I haven’t found it yet) is old and pages are falling out, so I need to get a new copy so haven’t done that yet.

So, to make a long drawn out endless story a wee bit less long, drawn out and endless, reading this article has helped to crystallize the critical importance (to me) that I take responsibility to instill joy in learning to our boy. It won’t be easy and I am sure I will backslide, but heck I have successfully completed complex multi-year projects before, so I should be able to do this as well.

Noisy humans actually distort the forest!

Man-made noise disrupts the growth of plants and trees
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/17457323

When I read the title I thought that somehow the plant and trees were being individually affected by the noise, but it seems it is ‘just’ the behavior of pollinators and seed dispersers. I recall recently learning about one of the side effects of reintroducing wolves to Yellow Stone: brook trout got larger. On the surface it is incredibly hard to make the leap to more wolves = larger fish, but this is what they discovered… The lack of predators for large grazing animals (elk, deer, etc.) meant that the shrubs and whatnot growing along the sides of creeks was kept very minimal which allowed for fish predators (such as eagles) to easily locate and capture the trout, thus forcing the population to reach sexual maturity faster (hence be smaller). The returning wolves favorite location to hunt is right along the sides of streams and creeks which lead to a dramatic reduction in the grazing there which lead to a huge resurgence of growth along the banks which made life a lot more difficult for the fish predators which allowed the trout to reach much larger sizes.

Life is full of these sorts of non-linear feedback loops (negative as well as positive (though which is which is often in the eye of the beholder)). That is what gives Darwin the field to determine fitness, thus survival, thus evolution. We are no doubt in the midst of a massive extinction event on par with some of the worst recorded in geological history and without a doubt the extinction event is all man-made. Also without a doubt many people will say that this is a bad thing, but it really is just a thing and life will adapt as it has no choice in doing and while we may see dramatic reductions in diversity, there are already clearly species that are winners in this human caused extinction event.

The apocalyptic Singularity

Vernor Vinge Is Optimistic About the Collapse of Civilization
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/03/vernor-vinge-geeks-guide-galaxy/

I like Mr. Vinge a lot as an author (I would love to hang out with him and find out if he is as cool in person). I loved his books based on the ‘bobble’ and the ability to do time travel (only into the future); see The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime. What I got most out of those books was the idea of the Technological singularity. I had thought of such ideas myself before reading his books as I had read an article someplace decades ago that plotted technology achievements vs time and it was crystal clear from looking at the graph that, likely in my lifetime, the slope of the line was going to become infinite. Having recently been in geometry classes I knew that weird things could happen when slopes became infinite and I was already pondering what would happen ‘after’. While it is possible that the slope could reverse its increasing rate, we could go through an inflection point, and then stagnate our way into infinity, I am of the opinion (perhaps because I have watched too much Star Trek and read too much SciFi) that if we can conceive of it (as a species) we can do it. Since there are loads of things we haven’t even conceived of yet I have a firm belief that there are one of two options for us (as a species) going forward: we blast ourselves out of existence or we cross the singularity. When such an event occurs I don’t have any meaningful predictions other than I believe it will occur in my life (largely because I am still convinced that life extending technology will arrive while I am still young enough to take advantage of it).

We are, of course, developing all sorts of ways to destroy ourselves, but in that area I have confidence that we won’t be able to achieve the magnitude necessary to actually eliminate the species and much like Vinge comments in the article, I would expect even a catastrophic 99.9% reduction in human population to result in nothing more than a wee blip in our continued travel along the path to the singularity.

As much as I would rather explore space and travel the galaxy (which in my analysis requires some sort of implausible dramatic advancement in a single technology without the parallel advancement of all other technologies), I expect I will happily engage in effort to help race toward the singularity and might actually greet it with enthusiasm. Perhaps there is amazing stuff on the other side and my curiosity to know will probably be too great to resist. Unlike my early blather about the looming Apocalypse (which really boils down to extended extreme discomfort rather than the Biblical disaster so often seen in movies), this I do see as inevitable and not too distant in the future. Unlike the apocalypse which I want to avoid it at all possible, I am unable to make up my mind about the singularity. As Vinge suggests, how can a zygote have any meaningful thoughts about what it means to be an adult human?

The echo chamber

You won’t read any of this in the US:

Robert Fisk: Madness is not the reason for this massacre
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-madness-is-not-the-reason-for-this-massacre-7575737.html

Even if we accept that the accused legitimately doesn’t remember killing those people, that doesn’t change the act or what surely motivated the act. As the author states:

Surely, if he was entirely deranged, our staff sergeant would have killed 16 of his fellow Americans. He would have slaughtered his mates and then set fire to their bodies. But, no, he didn’t kill Americans. He chose to kill Afghans. There was a choice involved. So why did he kill Afghans?

The act is a product of the scenario, just like My Lai. When you ask people to engage in pointless violet acts (i.e., repeatedly invade the same territory to kick out the Taliban/VC, only to fall back and allow the Taliban/VC to reassert its influence) it is inevitable that they start to treat the local population they were intended to ‘liberate’ as the enemy. The troops can’t conceive that the locals see the troops as invaders and are emotionally more sympathetic to the Taliban/VC and in any case, the locals know with absolute certainty that if they assist the troops in any way, when the troops leave they will be immediately set upon by the returning Taliban/VC (it is rather eery how similar the two wars are). As such, when the troops come back time after time after time again (because their leaders are too stupid (or don’t care, but that implies the intelligence for a conspiracy to evolve) to realize what is happening) each time they have less and less regard for the locals until the magical point when the locals they are sent to ‘liberate’ become the enemy and such massacres become inevitable.

My aunt (well, my wife’s mother’s best friend, but we all call her our aunt) was a nurse/spy for the US in Vietnam. Her job was to become associated closely with the local community so they would provide her with intel she could then direct back to the planners. She had some very narrow calls and had a lot of friends who wound up on the wrong side of that razor sharp line between the lucky and the dead, but she credits much of her success with forming close personal relationships with the locals (or at least that is how I interpret her stories). She was allowed, because of her ‘cover’ as a humanitarian, to continue engaging with the locals even as the tides of the war planners had the dividing line wash back and forth over the region. It was that, I believe, that enabled her relationship with the locals to be close enough that the locals would, at great personal risk (I can’t imagine them doing so if she wasn’t actually engaged in humanitarian work), warn her when it was time to get out of Dodge. Contrast that with the actions of the military. First and foremost, because they have no humanitarian ‘cover’ there is no doubt on the Taliban/VC part that warnings from the locals should result in reprisals. Second, the troops just show up (generally with a great deal of violence leading to so-called ‘collateral damage’), and then just disappear, they don’t establish deep personal involvement with the locals (if they did, they would be accused of ‘going native’ and no longer trusted by their own command and control). Each time the troops wash in and wash out they create increased bitterness on the local’s part because they know the Taliban/VC will enact reprisals even if they didn’t do a damn thing to help. Ordinary troopers really can’t be expected to react any other way, so these sorts of ‘unexpected, unpredictable’ events are actually the inescapable outcome from the moronic way our military works (as directed by our even more moronic politicians with absolutely no skin in the game whatsoever (driven, of course, by the military-industrial complex that stands to profit (and profit immensely) with the stagnation)).

So, like so many other ‘black swan events’ that are so unpredictable to the idiots who refuse to engage in even rudimentary historical analysis, the 9/11 attacks were completely unpredictable, so was the looting after invading Iraq and now the massacres by soldiers in Afghanistan. It must be great to live in such ignorance, yet be positioned to make such consequential decisions! So much easier to sleep at night not willing to be aware of the horrible things your decisions are going to cause. So much easier on the psyche to shout ‘no one could have known’ when the inevitable happens.

This would require taking politics out of education

Not something that I think has any potential with the current GOP morons…

Rice, Klein: Education keeps America safe
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/20/opinion/rice-klein-education/index.html?hpt=hp_bn6

I agree with much of what the article has to say (I know Rice, but don’t know Klein, but I presume Klein is some sort of liberal bigwig, else why would the article be special?), but I think it is wasted effort. In order for students to be educated about civics, world events, etc. they need to be exposed to many new ideas, ideas that the current crop of GOP Tea Party blowhards seem determined to ‘protect’ their children from.

Students need to learn how the world IS (or WAS in the case of history), not how some religious freak WANTS it to be. Ignorance is ignorance no matter how you reach that stage. If you are unwilling to learn or your educational system refuses to expose you to it, you remain ignorant and those who took the time (or whose system provided it) to become exposed to the real world will be able to achieve great things in comparison. I did not consider myself well educated as I was run through the mill more than 20 years ago (heck, for the most part I didn’t feel educated when I was churning my way through college either; even in graduate school it was more the pace that was challenging rather than the material or concepts) and based on conversations I have had with people in the educational world, coupled with seeing how my boy is taught, I am not filled with optimism that things have improved since then (rather the opposite).

I do see one fundamental issue, and I know this is elitist, but some people are just not suited for higher education (our high schools, btw, used to churn out people with the current equivalent of at least an associate’s degree; having a high school diploma used to matter). I do feel that there should be more options for vocational training in high school (and even middle school) and I have seen some places where that appears to be the case, but ultimately I think it should be trivial to leave school and challenging to remain. Now schools are basically dumping grounds for children, one gigantic government sponsored day-care center (which, btw, does a lousy assed job at that, who the hell designed the school day to be _shorter_ than the average work day?). Kids are basically warehoused with parents telling themselves it is for the best because the kids _might_ learn something while they are there. It is nigh on impossible for a teacher to get a student thrown out of class, no matter how disruptive the student is. I think that private schools are a wee bit more successful for the simple fact that they can throw the problem children out, so the bad apples don’t poison the rest of the barrel like seems to be happening in the public school system.

I have complained about our ‘educational‘ system many times here and will probably vent more in the future, just like my constant droning on about our police state or incipient war with Iran. I think it is critical for people to be aware of how miserable our situation is. We could do so very much better, but without a willingness to emphasize what works and discard what doesn’t (and our current paradigm clearly doesn’t!) and of course the willingness to have objective standards that actually align with reality (as opposed to denying evolution in favor of teaching so-called intelligent design), we are doomed to this treadmill of ever increasing mediocrity. Like so many of the events leading to the coming apocalypse I see this as a thread in the tapestry of the downfall of the US Empire.

Of course, even ‘real’ criminals rip off our country

RS policies help fuel tax refund fraud, officials say
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/20/us/tax-refund-scam/index.html

A sad article indeed. The sums involved are HUGE and all of it a direct withdrawal from our (taxpayer) pockets. This is on par with medicare/medicaid fraud: billions of dollars. The only solution offered? Make it more difficult for the rest of us to get our refunds! It is bad enough we are already giving the government a year-long interest-free loan, now to reduce fraud we will get to extend that even longer so the government can finally do what it should have been doing all along: match up the information it has in its left-hand database with its right-hand database and figure out who the heck is breaking the law. Hopefully then they will see that the criminals wind up in jail for their efforts.

All a pipe dream, of course!

Archeology via satellite

Satellites spy thousands of ancient human settlements
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/20/satellites-spy-thousands-ancient-human-settlements/

This is a really cool idea to me. As mentioned in the article this is not the first time satellites have been used to identify archeology sites, but this is the first I am aware of that is on such a huge scale and would allow for larger analysis (such as mentioned in the article about looking at resources used over time). Of course exploration of any of these sites will be a long and drawn out process. Very little money makes it into archeology (at least legitimately, the sale of pilfered artifacts is supposed to be quite lucrative) and what there is tends to focus on research that is expected to be highly visible (such as excavating Pharaoh tombs and whatnot). I would love to see the results of some excavations on some of these older sites, what amazing things might be found from 7,000 year old cities?

Expanding Wall Street’s license to steal

Senate mulls an express lane for IPOs
http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/20/smallbusiness/ipo-bill/index.htm?source=cnn_bin

As if it wasn’t already easy enough for the oligarchy to rip off ordinary people, now we have legislation that will turn the clock all the way back to before the ’29 crash. It is mind blowing the arrogance that would lead someone to so thoroughly gut what little remains of the protections against unscrupulous brokers so soon after our most recent crash. The only thing that makes the tiniest bit of sense is the part about crowd sourcing, but even there that should be limited to tiny amounts, like less than a few million. It is laughable (if it weren’t so demoralizing) to think that a company with a billion in revenue (which should be producing at a minimum of $100 million in profit if it is worth a damn to investors) can’t afford the listing requirements of an IPO. Even going to $350 million is also a joke. I know from personal research that the cost of an IPO is generally a few percent of the offering (or around a minimum of a million bucks) and while I have a strong moral objection to handing that money to Wall Street (to basically do nothing but enrich their cronies (I should stop now before I get off topic)) that is just part of the game to have the legal boxes checked to seek investment. Removing all those legal requirements means that scammers (which, all my reader(s) should be well aware, is basically the definition of Wall Street operatives) will have no restrictions whatsoever. It is bad enough that when Wall Street actually broke laws and contracts they have not been prosecuted, it is unbelievably worse to strip away those unenforced laws and contracts!

Of course, since the sheeple have no clue what this means this or something substantially identical will be put into place shortly (it will probably be renamed the “Investor Protection Act” or something idiotically ironic like that).

I like to think that things can’t get worse and will have to start getting better, but then I keep reading this sort of crap.